We can dare to dream of the stars again, if only we can achieve this small thing.

[Welsh cake]

NASA was conceived as an organizing agency to beat the soviets in the vital fields of high performance military aerospace technology and ballistic missile technology, and secondarily as vanity tool to try and trump the soviets bragging rights excessively emphasized in an more naively idealistic age. It probably was never a sustainably efficient organization for advancement of generally applied and basic science.

Delicious irony that they prided themselves on getting to the moon and yet the Soviets still won the space race in the end after all.

They're still putting up rockets as we speak whereas the rest of us are filling in petitions.

[Minimalist]

But at least rich cocksuckers don't have to pay taxes.

Now there's American "exceptionalism" for you!

[Anomalocaris]

American exceptionalism is when a completely failed and extensive fracture empire that was never rich, and is now quite poor, can support a viable manned space program while America can't.

[Minimalist]

But we can.


We simply lack the political will to do so.

[Annik]

In the interest of clarity, while it's not clear how that 0.53% should be measured (there are legitimately different methods), 0.53% of the federal budget for 2012 was $20 billion dollars. (Providing my math is correct and there's a favorable wind from the East. har har) Are we saying that this $20 billion dollars is better spent on NASA than any other potential use? Curing cancer? Adequate police forces? Sheltering the homeless? Educating our children about the science we already know? I find such a balancing equation far from trivial.

Just to put it in perspective, that 0.5% over ten years could reduce the national debt by 0.5%. Are space dreams that will end up being paid for by mortgaging our children's future more important than that future. Again, I find the arguments not simply uncompelling, I see no arguments at all. It's a "Don't Worry, Be Happy," approach that I find less than laudable.

Well, considering the US's defense budget makes up half of the money spent on defense in the entire world, that might be a good place to take our budget from.
The info-graph can be seen here.

In addition, the Department of Defense gets 20% of our national budget ( You can see that info-graph here ), which is crazy. Crazy! We don't need to be spending this much where we could spend it otherwise. I'm all for cutting it down to only 10% and allocating all those funds for scientific/medical needs. Maybe then we can afford socialized medicine.

As Mr. Tyson said in the video, there is no excuse.

[Hovik]

There is no excuse for not funding space exploration. Nothing is more important than that. Our entire world's existence counts for nothing if, as Mosrhun said, we all die out on this mote of dust without ever stepping foot off this planet.

[libalchris]

http://www.xkcd.com/893/
"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."

[Anomalocaris]

There is no excuse for not funding space exploration. Nothing is more important than that. Our entire world's existence counts for nothing if, as Mosrhun said, we all die out on this mote of dust without ever stepping foot off this planet.

The greatest barrier to diversifying away from planet earth is not lack of space exploration. It is the lack of the basic science foundation needed to provide a genuinely affordable mass access to space. There has been no major improve to space access technology since 1957. Solution to this problem likely require sustained founding of many fields of basic research. Funding actual cursory space exploration itself would probably not contribute a whole lot to overcoming this real barrier.

If you want true mass access to space as soon as possible, you probably would do better by funding broad based applied physics research than by funding probes to mars.

[Annik]

There is no excuse for not funding space exploration. Nothing is more important than that. Our entire world's existence counts for nothing if, as Mosrhun said, we all die out on this mote of dust without ever stepping foot off this planet.

The greatest barrier to diversifying away from planet earth is not lack of space exploration. It is the lack of the basic science foundation needed to provide a genuinely affordable mass access to space. There has been no major improve to space access technology since 1957. Solution to this problem likely require sustained founding of many fields of basic research. Funding actual cursory space exploration itself would probably not contribute a whole lot to overcoming this real barrier.

If you want true mass access to space as soon as possible, you probably would do better by funding broad based applied physics research than by funding probes to mars.

Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks a lot about this, but we need to convince the world science matters again. How many kids still want to be astronauts and not douches on the Jersey Shore? If we can fund space programs and get humanity excited about it again, we can start little scientists off young and with promise.

[Minimalist]

If you want true mass access to space as soon as possible, you probably would do better by funding broad based applied physics research than by funding probes to mars.

"Jesus" would have a shit fit....or so his followers claim.